Feature Beer Friday: Port Orleans' GL37SON IPA

By Eric Ducote

Good morning everyone, and welcome to another Feature Beer Friday!  This week I'm checking out the GL37SON IPA (as in Steve Gleason, former New Orleans Saint) from Port Orleans Brewing, which is co-owned by former New Orleans Saint Zach Strief.  I've mentioned Port Orleans Brewing before in my post about the New Orleans Beer Tour, but this is the first time I've picked some up in retail packaging. 

The GL37SON IPA is brewed in honor of former Saint Steve Gleason, who has become a famous advocate for people living with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.  It's a standard strength IPA, at 5.8% volume and dry-hopped with around 5 pounds per barrel of Mosaic, Azacca, and Lemondrop hops.  The IPA is served hazy in the New England style, and a portion of the sales of each beer go to Team Gleason for care for people suffering from ALS.

Port Orleans' GL37SON IPA

The beer pours a hazy yellow-gold color with a frothy white head, exactly as expected for the style.  The nose is boldly citrus with faint hints of a little resin in there underneath the strong orange and lemon citrus aroma.  The taste is more of the same, with an underlying malt sweetness that gets easily overpowered by the dry hopping.  The finish is clean, with lingering citrus leaving me wanting more.  

Regardless of the good cause, this is another easy drinking hoppy option for Louisiana drinkers looking for citrus hop flavors.  I wouldn't hesitate to buy some more.  Cheers!    

Feature Beer Friday: Parish's Pure Tropics IPA

By Eric Ducote

Good morning everyone and welcome to another Feature Beer Friday here at Bite and Booze.  This week I'm going to take a look at one of the recent hoppy releases from Parish Brewing out of Broussard, Louisiana.  Those that read this space regularly, and most of you in the South Louisiana area are certainly already familiar with Parish, so I'll dive right into the beer review!  

Parish Brewing's Pure Tropics IPA

This particular beer is the Pure Tropics IPA.  It's a 7% abv brewed with an IPA base recipe then conditioned on mango, pineapple, and pink guava puree.  Sounds amazing to me!  

The pour is effervescent, with a golden orange color that absolutely fits in with the NEIPA style and the tropical notes to the beer.  The aroma is a beautiful blend of hoppy flavors and tropical fruit, with the mango coming through strongest in my opinion, although I'm not all that familiar with the pink guava fruit.  Pineapple is a flavor that tends to dominate any drink, which is why it was always a key ingredient to the jungle juice back in my college days, but it's well blended here and doesn't take over the beer entirely.  Each sip is fantastic, with the hoppy citrus notes married with the fruit flavors in a harmonious relationship.  

Parish has another great offering with this round of Pure Tropics, and I'm pretty sure there is still plenty to be found out and about in town, so if you see a 4-pack, buy with confidence.  

Feature Beer Friday: Tin Roof's Côte Ouest IPA

By Eric Ducote

Good morning everyone, on this beautiful first day of Fall!  Oh wait, it's still a billion degrees outside, but at least it's football season, right?  And at least cold cooler weather is on the way!  So I've been told, next weekend should finally start to feel a little like Fall, but this weekend is going to feel a little like the surface of the Sun.  

For today's Feature Beer I went back to local brewery Tin Roof for their latest specialty release, the Côte Ouest IPA, brewed in collaboration with Blake Winchell and Bill Childress of Brasseurs A La Maison.  As the name suggests, this is a traditional American IPA in the West coast style as opposed to the trendy New England style that's all the rage right now.  That means more malt balance, more bittering hops, and usually less back end dry hopping.  It also traditionally means a departure from the hazy "juicy" feel of the NE style, although this particular example retained some haziness.  

The Côte Ouest is draft only, but the batch resulted in about 10 barrels of finished product, so expect to see it on tap at the Tin Roof taproom for several more weeks as well.  Since cans weren't available, I grabbed a crowler on my last visit to try later.  First thing though, check out that fancy tap handle!  Apparently Blake didn't even know he was going to be features so prominently until he showed up to the release party, so I guess the joke is on him.  

Tin Roof's Cote Ouest IPA

On to the beer!  First the stats... 7.5% abv which is right at the cut off between IPA and DIPA, and approximately 70 IBU.  The pour is a dark orange-ish color with a bubbly white head and a decent amount of haze.  The hop aroma is still strong but more floral and traditionally bitter rather than citrus.  The taste is strongly bitter, and despite the darker color, there isn't a huge malt presence, rather the Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, and Amarillo hops come through with a combination of floral and piney bitterness with still a hint of citrus but not an overpowering presence.  All four of those hop varieties are produced in the Pacific NW and are prominent in the American IPA's surge in popularity, so it's great to see them used so generously in this beer.  

This won't be on tap for too long, so if you like hoppy bitterness and are looking for a change of pace and a bit of a throwback, head over to Tin Roof and give this a taste.  Cheers! 

Feature Beer Friday: Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little Thing IPA

by Eric Ducote

Good morning everyone, and welcome to another Feature Beer Friday!  I hope you all enjoyed the NOLA Magical Brewery Beer Bus Tour recap last week, and I hope to include more event recaps in the future, but this week it's back to a beer review.  We're smack dab in the middle of Summer now, so while browsing the beer selection at my local store of choice recently I saw some of the Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA... alright, sounds like a good refreshing but not over the top brew.  After checking the date (this 6-pack was brewed on 5/31/18) I added it to my cart, and now it's a feature beer here on the internet.

A little about Sierra Nevada... they are one of the grandfathers of the modern craft beer movement, starting from homebrewer Ken Grossman's homebrew store and opening in 1980 as a craft brewery.  Their standard Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was one of the three flagships and is often credited as the beer that really launched America's craft beer revolution.  The other two flagships, the Sierra Nevada Stout and Porter are still in production today as well, with largely unchanged recipes, but one thing that has led Sierra Nevada to thrive is their commitment to adapt to trends and styles, which is why you'll see them jumping on board the "haze craze" and putting out a beer like "Hazy Little Thing" when other established breweries might scoff at the idea of a hazy IPA. 

Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little IPA

So, on to the beer... this is a new release from Sierra Nevada, they describe it as an "unfiltered, unprocessed IPA, straight from the tanks and into the can."  It's 6.7% abv, with 40 IBU, bittered with Magnum hops and finished with Citra, Comet, Simcoe, El Dorado, and Mosaic.  I'm not too familiar with Comet, but I am a huge fan of the other four, and would expect this to give a very complex hop character instead of a one-note citrus bomb. 

The pour is expectedly hazy... a little darker than some I've tried recently with more of an orange and gold color and a very bubbly head.  The aroma is a combination of grapefruit and dank notes, with the dank coming through a little stronger.  The taste is a lot of the same, with a combination of citrus, herbal, dank, and piney characters that create a fascinating departure from the hazy IPAs I've been drinking recently.  There's also a little more of a bitter finish, which I really enjoy and I find can be missing sometimes from the new-school NEIPAs.  

In all, excellent effort from Sierra Nevada on this one to blend some of the characteristics that we're used to seeing in a hazy IPA with some of the characteristics that we're used to seeing in a West Coast IPA.  It makes for an outstanding refreshing Summer beer option, or really any time of year.  Cheers! 

Feature Beer Friday: Rahr & Sons' Dadgum IPA

by Eric Ducote

Hello everybody, and welcome to another edition of Feature Beer Friday!  No blind side by side tasting this week (will come back to that idea though for sure) but I did recently pick up a few beers from Rahr & Sons Brewing Company out of Fort Worth, TX, and anytime I see a new brewery (to me at least) in our market I think it's worthy of a little exploration.  

As I just mentioned, Rahr & Sons hails from Fort Worth, TX, having opened in 2004 before the craft beer movement really exploded.  Those of you that dabble in brewing, on the homebrew scale or larger, might know the name "Rahr" from the Rahr Malting Company, which supplies malted barley to breweries across the country.  Rahr & Sons Brewing was founded by the great great grandson of William Rahr, the founder of the Rahr Malting Company and Eagle Brewing Company, so brewing is definitely part of the family history. Tragically, William Rahr died from burns he suffered due to falling into a brew kettle during an inspection of his brewery in 1880.  Let that be a less to all homebrewers and commercial brewers alike, safety is important! 

Rahr & Sons' Dadgum IPA

This week's selection is their flagship Dadgum IPA, 6.6% abv and charged with citra and lemondrop hops.  It's a deep golden color, very little haze, with a bubbly white head that lingers for a while.  I find the aroma to be quite bitter, with notes of pine and lemon and a little grainy sweetness.  The flavor is hoppy with a medium bitterness, pine notes still come through as well as more citrus, and there's a definite malty base to support the IBUs.  This is certainly a departure from the haze craze, with a strong lingering bitter finish.  

I'll have no problem finishing off this 6-pack, and if you are looking for a bit of a throwback IPA, this one might in your wheelhouse.  If you're wanting more and more dry hops and haze, this isn't the beer you are looking for. One thing is for sure though, there is plenty of room in my fridge for both.  Cheers! 

Feature Beer Friday: Flying Tiger's Heroic Hops IPA

by Eric Ducote

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Feature Beer Friday! We're staying in-state this week with an offering from Flying Tiger Brewery out of Monroe. This is one of the handful of Louisiana breweries that I haven't yet had a chance to visit, and in fact I don't think I've ever even been to Monroe.  I certainly don't remember ever visiting, and that's something that I'll have to change eventually... and when I do, a visit to the Flying Tiger taproom will certainly be in order.  

Flying Tiger Brewery (not to be confused with Flying Heart or Crying Eagle) takes their name from the Flying Tigers, a volunteer group of American pilots who defended China against Japan during World War II. They were commanded by General Claire Chennault, who grew up in small Louisiana towns near Monroe. 

Heroic Hops is one of four flagship brews produced by Flying Tiger, in addition to a rotating lineup of seasonal and specialty brews in their taproom. The Man At Arms Amber Ale, Burma Blonde, and Warhawk Kolsch (a ULM affiliated beer) round out their flagship offerings. Heroic Hops comes in at 5.8% ABV and 69 IBU, right in the wheelhouse for an American IPA. They describe the beer as, "Citrus, Sauvignon grape, and tropical notes fly forward as these hops blend effortlessly with a strong base of two row and Munich malts. Let there be no mistake, heroism is definitive…as is the beer you drink."  

Heroic Hops IPA by Flying Tiger Brewery

My first impression on pouring this beer is that it's hazier than I expected... I was expecting more of a traditional IPA look to this one but it's got a good bit of turbidity going on. I'm not saying it's as hazy as last week's Jucifer, but it's certainly not a filtered clear IPA either. The color is gold-to-amber, with a bubbly white champagne-esque head. The aroma is definitely strong with the sauvignon grape notes they described. I don't know if I would have picked that out without the description, but now that it's in my head, it's all I can think of when I smell this beer. There are definitely hints of citrus as well, but the sauvignon notes dominate in my opinion. The taste is a great follow through on the inviting aroma, with a fantastic balance of bitterness of tropical flavor, and the malt smartly stays out of the way to let the hops shine.  

All in all, this one really impressed me. I had only tried a few beers from Flying Tiger before, and wasn't sure what to expect from this IPA, but it has all the makings of a fantastic Summer weather back patio beer. Unfortunately this one isn't available in Baton Rouge yet, but next time you are up in North Louisiana, grab some, and bring a 6-pack down for me!

Cheers!